DISCOVERIES THAT open a new window on the
prehistory of ancient Egypt have been made by
British archaeologists who have found 30 sites
rich in art chiseled into rocks up to 6,000
years ago in the desert east of the Nile. The
rock drawings show cattle, boats, ostriches,
giraffes, hippos and the people who lived in the
area in 4000 BC, long before the pharaohs or the
pyramids.

"It's the Sistine Chapel of predynastic
Egypt. It's amazing," said Toby Wilkinson
of Cambridge, who led the Eastern Desert Survey
this month. "What this does is open up a
completely new chapter in the study of Egyptian civilization
and its origins."

Ancient Egypt was always a puzzle. The civilization
appeared to archaeologists to have
sprung up along a ribbon of fertile land on
either side of the Nile.

Even to the ancient Greeks, the Sphinx and the
pyramids seemed to have always been there. The
challenge has been to identify the origins of
settlement on the Nile. Egyptologists now think
the forefathers of the pyramid builders could be
the people who left their signatures on stones
in the desert 6,000 years ago.

"Some of it is quite breathtaking," Dr
Wilkinson said. "It is very difficult to
date precisely, but looking at the stylistic
parallels, a lot of this art has got to be from
around 4,000 BC. That is pretty old — and some
of it is even older. "Looking at the
similarities between the rock art pictures and
the painted pottery from the same period in the
Nile, it is pretty clear that the same people
were producing both."

Egypt began to turn to desert in about 3,500BC.
Until then, the landscape would have been much
like the present east African Savannah, with
waterholes and seasonal rivers.

Dr Wilkinson said, "We think of Egypt today
as just a narrow strip on either side of the
Nile valley. We are going to have to rethink our
idea of the extent of Egypt, 7,000 or 6,000
years ago. It wasn't just the Nile valley, it
was this vast area on either side which was able
to support life. These people moved out of the
Savannah's into the Nile valley and settled
there, and this is what kick started Egyptian civilization." (GNS)

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